


The Worst Trip Ever

by Tierfal



Series: The Worst Trip Ever [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3589428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alfons and Ed are on a road trip, and it is <em>terrible</em> that it's so great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Worst Trip Ever

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InkdropFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkdropFox/gifts).



> Speedfic for my Saaaaaaaammyyyyyyyyy. ♥
> 
> Happy birthday, kiddo! ilu so much, you precious human. ;__; Never worry about looking forward, because I'm always going to have your back. ♥

As it turns out, this road-trip-with-the-best-friend thing was about the single worst idea Alfons has ever had.

To be fair, it was a good _theory_.  Statistically speaking, the majority of the time, spending multiple successive days in enclosed spaces with others significantly increases his frustration with their habits and alerts him to dozens of new and exciting reasons not to like the people that he’s with.  Mostly, traveling with other human beings for an extended period firmly cements in him a general distaste for staying in their proximity any longer than strictly necessary, no matter how much he might have liked them to begin with.

But—and maybe this is typical; maybe he should have factored it in—the theory doesn’t work with Ed.

That is sort of characteristic, isn’t it?  Ed is such a freaking weird, off-kilter, effortlessly brilliant jerk that he refuses to follow scientifically expected patterns even when Alfons’s well-being depends on it.  _Especially_ when Alfons’s well-being depends on it.

Probably, Alfons should have known better.  That’s sort of the story of his sad little life, isn’t it?  He should have known that Ed would sing in the car only when Alfons turned up the crappy eighties dance-pop, and even then not with much volume or confidence, even though he sounds okay, and that all in all it would be _disgustingly_ cute.  He should have known that Ed would, as predicted, call his brother every single night—but that instead of complaining about what a crappy travel companion Alfons is, apparently all he does is listen to Al talk excitedly about kittens for an hour.  Which, again— _cute_.

And he always talks with his mouth full and his eyes alight, which should be obnoxious but isn’t.  And he’s hilariously bad with maps for someone who can diagram a complicated engineering problem in a matter of seconds, but their unintentional detour through the deepest woods in Oregon was weirdly kind of fun.  And Winry was right—he _does_ snore—but they’re these little tiny cat-like noises that don’t really prevent Alfons from falling asleep, and… it’s _adorable_.

Alfons would be fuming with rage if he wasn’t so fucking lovesick that he can’t remember how to be angry.

This is the worst trip ever.

He’s going to snap; he just knows it.  At least maybe then Ed will realize what a damn freak he is and start being mean to him or something, and then maybe he’ll be able to talk himself out of this _stupid_ crush and move on with his life.

In the meantime, at least they planned their destinations pretty well: the Seattle Museum of Flight is _completely_ worth the long chain of existential crises that he had to deal with on the way.

At the same time as it’s lifting his spirits into the stratosphere, though, the magnificent exhibit on space travel is kind of making him sad, too.

The thing is, everybody has a phase when they’re five or so where they want to be an astronaut—and that’s cool, that’s normal, and parents sort of smile and let you make fishbowl helmets, and even if you jury-rig a seriously impressive breathing apparatus out of spare parts from the broken dishwasher and paper towel rolls, they figure… imaginative playtime, whatever, all good.

But you’re supposed to grow out of it.

You’re supposed to set your sights on better, wiser, more realistic goals.  You’re supposed to realize that you want to be a doctor or a lawyer or some crap—something prestigious, something profitable.  Something grounded.  You’re supposed to keep your feet firmly planted and your head well below the clouds; you’re supposed to scrawl out long equations and think _accounting_ , not _escape velocity_.  You’re supposed to daydream about a house and kids and a dog or something, not about weightlessness and starlight and the beautiful silence of the void.

“Y’know,” Ed says from right next to his shoulder, and he can’t help it that he jumps; “you’ve got tons of time to change your major to aerospace engineering.”

“Nah,” Alfons says, and he tries to smile.  “They wouldn’t really want me anyway.”  He gestures to himself—to the chronic bronchitis-ravaged lungs; to the asthmatic airways; to the low, low, unending thrum of the anxiety that’s waiting every day around every single corner, with the shadows on its side.

“Why the hell not?” Ed asks.  It’s funny—the frown and the scowl used to be indistinguishable, but now Alfons could tell them apart from a mile away.  …with binoculars, anyway.  He’s not a bird of prey or something, though not for lack of wishing that he was.  “You’re, like, the smartest person I’ve ever met, except maybe Al, and he’s smart in a different way, so it’s not really apples to apples.  And you’re totally driven and great at thinking on your feet, and you love that shit more than anybody on the planet _or_ off.  Like hell are some breathing problems gonna stop NASA from groveling at your feet when you’d be the best thing that ever happened to them, and they’d know it.”

And Alfons—

Sees his hand reaching out, sees his fingers curling into the front of Ed’s _Don’t be a boron_ T-shirt, has time to think _Oh God Heiderich_ no _—_

And then is kissing him—Ed.  He’s kissing Edward Elric.  Soundly.

Ed tastes like cinnamon gum, which is unsurprising, because he consumes inhuman quantities of it; and like sunshine, which is physically improbable to say the least, but… but that’s what it _is_.

Momentarily, Alfons regains control of his mental faculties and draws back, fumbling to release his vise grip on Ed’s shirt, trying to figure out if he’s experiencing vivid auditory hallucinations, or if Ed really did just make a contented noise into his mouth a second ago.

Slowly, but ineluctably—like the rise of the tides, or the curl of the clouds, or the turn of the planet—Ed grins, and then he runs his tongue over his upper lip.

So maybe that answers that question.

“Um,” Alfons says, and this time the trill of his heartbeat has nothing to do with the weight of the thousand _what-if_ s.  “That… um… thanks.  That’s a—that’s a nice thing—to say.  Thank you.”

Are people staring at them?  Holy _crap_ ; he just made out with another dude in the middle of a museum; are they going to get kicked out?  He was planning to spend the rest of his existence here—or at least, like, six more hours; what if a security guard…?

Ed’s still grinning.  One of his eyebrows arches high.

“Anytime,” he says, and it’s a pretty good bet that he’s not just talking about the compliment.

Somehow—despite all of it, despite _himself_ —Alfons finds that he’s grinning back.


End file.
